Custody Case Takes New Turn As Father Takes Kids To Colorado

June 27, 1986|The Morning Call

Linda Blickhahn will take her custody battle back to Northampton County Court on Wednesday, when she will ask that her ex-husband be found in contempt of court for moving with their two children to Colorado earlier this month.

She disappeared with the children, now 6 and 8 years old, for 17 months in the summer of 1982, and herex-husband, Charles Blickhahn, hired investigators to look for them. He was awarded custody in an October 1984 order by Judge Michael V. Franciosa.

Mrs. Blickhahn was given limited visitation privileges and ordered to pay $7,500 to her ex-husband for the costs he incurred in finding the boy and girl. Franciosa also suspended a $10,000 fine against her for contempt of an earlier custody order.

In papers filed yesterday in the civil court office at the courthouse, her new attorney, Jon Saltzman, says that Mrs. Blickhahn was notified June 19 by her former attorney, Robert Rosenblum of Stroudsburg, that her ex-husband planned to move with the children to Colorado on June 21.

When she called Blickhahn June 19 to confirm the move, the petition says, he told her the children were on a plane to Colorado and he would follow on Saturday. And when she objected to his taking the children from the area without first seeking a modification of the court order, "He laughingly replied that he could do anything he wanted" with the children, according to the petition.

When she contacted his employer, Fuller GATX, to determine his whereabouts, the petition says, she was told he no longer worked there.

Mrs. Blickhahn is asking the court to find Blickhahn in contempt, order him to return to the county in order to modify the visitation order and temporarily award her primary legal custody of the children.

Blickhahn's attorney, Richard Shiroff, confirmed that Blickhahn returned to Colorado, his original home, with the children. Blickhahn apparently intends to open a business there.

Shiroff said that, in his opinion, the court order handed down by Franciosa permits Blickhahn to move, because he has custody of the children. "There's no restriction on that," he said, but he added, "We'll have to change the visitation."